


we were born sick (a fresh poison every week)

by elysiantree



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Multi, WARNING WARNING WARNING, graphic-ish description of injury, was gonna rate this M but there wasn't enough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 17:47:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28674699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elysiantree/pseuds/elysiantree
Summary: What powers would do this? she asks out loud, staring at her bloody wings in the mirror, and Tikki is silent.Tikki has been silent for the downfall of the last forty thousand of her holders. Why should she make an exception for Marinette?
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, others
Comments: 7
Kudos: 51





	we were born sick (a fresh poison every week)

**Author's Note:**

> Here, take this.
> 
> i promise i don't normally write this stuff but i was inspired

The Miraculous were crafted in ancient China under steel and red blood, stones, jewelry harnessing the Kwami to our plane of existence. 

The Kwami, however, are not easily controlled, and roared back at the humans that dared undermine their power. Tikki, Kwami of Creation, and her counterpart of Destruction forever punished all future holders of the Miraculous by adding some unforeseen side effects.

Later, of course, they regret it. 

But what is done by mixing the powers of Creation and Destruction cannot be _un_ done.

*

The first bad sign is Alya noticing that her teeth are just a little bit sharper, after she’s been wielding her Miraculous for a month. After using it a year, she has to be careful never to bite her tongue. 

Her footfalls are softer, which she uses to her advantage, padding around the house at early hours. She sleeps more in the daytime and finds herself up at night more often.

Probably just hormones, she tells herself, fingering the pendant around her neck.

*

Kagami’s breath is hotter after Miracle Queen, even though she’s given up her Miraculous. Lucky for her, that’s the only thing that happens. She closes her mouth and burns her tongue. 

Adrien notes that she’s become a lot more talkative.

*

Alix, well, Alix is hairier, a fine white down cropping up all over her body. It’s minor, and she doesn’t worry about it, but what really concerns her is that she can’t seem to remember everyday things. What did she eat for breakfast? What time was dinner yesterday?

She couldn’t tell you.

Alix combs over her timelines to try and find an answer and runs her tongue over her growing front teeth. 

(The Kwami, of course, were wiser than that. They made sure to erase any and every hint of what they’d done from history.)

*

Luka breaks out in rashes all over his body: scaly, peeling, a bright, offended red. The school nurse rubs some Neosporin on his arms and face and tells him to go to the doctor. Somehow he senses not to, or maybe he’s already tried it in another loop. It’s best not to know.

Either way, he’s raw and bleeding on his thighs, face, the bottom of his feet, hands, fingers, everywhere he can see, and doing anything hurts. Transforming is the only thing that relieves the pain, if but momentarily, and even then he knows it speeds up the process.

All in all, he’s the first to realize.

*

Gabriel can’t feel.

He wakes up one morning blind and deaf and floating in a void. He shouts out, not able to hear himself, again and again, until he thinks his voice has probably died out. 

Nathalie’s come to get him, he imagines, and Adrien’s worried, and—

And he’s alone to his thoughts.

Forever.

*

Max gets lost.

He’s only wielded his Miraculous three times, and far enough apart that for some reason his symptoms aren’t so bad.

But his legs grow longer and more bony, and he finds that he can’t remember the location of his bedroom, and wanders the halls endlessly at school trying to find the gym.

Later, when they all figure it out, he realizes that he’s lucky. That he’s been spared.

It still hurts.

*

Kim grows weaker, and weaker, over a series of days, of weeks, of months. He doesn’t race Alix (who’s wearing jeans, long sleeves and a face scarf, because she’s cold, she says) anymore.

“I’m fine, just tired,” becomes his de facto statement.

*

Chloe drips venom.

Her symptoms start before anyone else’s. Her saliva stings her mouth, and causes cold sores. When she bleeds, it’s acid. 

She wraps herself in coats and tries not to touch anything sharp, avoiding paper and the only two people she cares about, Adrien and her father.

If only she could avoid herself.

*

Nathalie is dying, slowly, slowly. Emotions are the bread of life, and she can feel none.

That is all that can be said.

*

Nino breaks out in rashes the same as Luka, but not quite as bad; it’s concentrated to his back in a hexagonal pattern. His skin takes on a greenish tint, and he finds himself constantly getting hurt.

Protection, after all, can’t protect himself.

*

Adrien is slowly decomposing.

Not graphically, no, but parts of him are turning pitch black in the pattern of Cataclysm’s bubbles and whorls.

First his fingers - gloves are the solution to that - then his feet - regular shoes - his ears - muffs -

He only hopes it doesn’t reach his face. His father’s in the hospital - the doctors say brain-dead - so he doesn’t have to worry about photoshoots, but how would he explain this to his friends? To his teachers? To Ladybug? To himself?

Like Dumbledore’s hand, a different part of him thinks, but he shakes that off.

Dumbledore’s hand, you see, slowly killed him.

And this, of course, is merely passing.

*

Marinette grows wings. They rip from her back, clear and gossamer but stained red with blood. It takes a while, but after they heal she wears thick coats and stuffs them down the back.

She bruises far more easily now, dark purple and blackish spots mockingly ornamenting her skin, tinted red, in a sardonic imitation of her suit.

What powers would do this? she asks out loud, and Tikki is silent.

Tikki has been silent for the downfall of the last forty thousand of her holders. Why should she make an exception for Marinette?

And yet, suddenly, she does, and tells her everything. The curse she and Plagg put on the Miraculous, how Jeanne d’Arc was the only one of her holders to not succumb to the symptoms (which was only because she was burned before they fully affected her), the symptoms of the other Holders, _everything._

“There’s no hope for you,” she tells the blue-haired girl.

Marinette looks at her with a strange mix of hatred and determination in her eyes. “I’ll find hope.”

Tikki looks on with sympathy, and helps where she can, but knows that Marinette is using her dying year for nothing.

*

“Most of us are going to die,” Ladybug says frankly to her team, three months later. She’s pored over the grimoire, everything given to her, everything she can possibly find, and eventually determined that Tikki had been right.

There’s no hope. 

“Rena. Carapace.” She points them out one by one, and they pale at her condemning touch. “Viperion. Queen Bee.” She hesitates. “...Chat.”

He looks at her with something different in his eyes, something almost like resignation, and gives a half-smile. The black has spread to his face, twisting in the too-familiar spheres and curves of Cataclysm and completely covering one eye.

Chat Noir and Ladybug die last. That’s the rule.

Maybe it’s so they can watch the rest of their team suffer. Maybe it’s to grant them a little extra time to try to save themselves. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

She takes a deep breath. “Which is why I’m revealing myself. Spots off.”

Spots off. _Ha,_ she thinks, watching the rest of the team stare at her body, covered in purplish-black bruises, perfectly round, in the exact formation of a Ladybug’s spots. The spots never left her.

“Claws in,” says Chat Noir, and she gasps at how covered with the remnants of Cataclysm he is.

Even his eyes are black.

“Scales rest.” His face is peeling and raw.

“Shell down.” Green skin, blood-stained shirt.

“Buzz off.” Her mouth drips with yellow poison.

“Clear the sky.” Kagami’s lips are burnt and cracking.

“Counterclockwise.” Her teeth are almost ridiculously large and she’s covered in white fur.

“Show over.” Kim slumps to the ground, barely able to stand.

“Full stop.” He looks around, confused, and puts a hand to his head.

“Let’s rest.” Alya bares her fangs and bleeding mouth.

She stares around at her dying team and wishes she never accepted the damn Miraculous. Wishes she never gave the Fox to Alya. Wishes—

But wishes are worth nothing.

Not anymore.

*

By the time they start dying, Marinette doesn’t have enough energy to remember who goes first.

All she knows is that it’s less than two years after she first got the Miraculous.

*

Tikki’s at her bedside when she dies, coughing up blood from her many bruises. Blood, crimson, red as a ladybug.

“I’m sorry, Marinette,” she whispers, sitting on her cheek.

“It’s…okay, Tikki,” Marinette manages. “I…forgive you.”

And like that, as if a switch had been flipped, Tikki knows the curse is broken, just as Marinette breathes her final breath.

Forgiveness.

Tikki has to take a while to think about that.

**Author's Note:**

> leave comments and kudos if you liked it! tumblr @an-elysian-tree


End file.
